If they didn't file a patent and didn't have an invention to show and BigCo still beat them to having a working patentable invention that just means the "invention" was an obvious idea whose time had come, which is really the biggest problem with modern patents, IMO.
The self-centered egotistical notion that these ideas are something unique to one inventor as opposed to the reality where the vast majority (though certainly not all) of ideas are just obvious consequences of timing and everything that came before is really, really goofy and it is crazy that we award the first person who happens to legally file such ideas a nearly 2 decade monopoly on them.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson who very clearly had a much higher bar in mind for awards of patentability than the rubber-stamping we do today:
Just a couple of examples, but pretty much whenever Jefferson writes about patentable ideas he always stresses how high the bar must be on both real novelty of the invention and high social value of the invention.
If he had any notion of what patents would turn into today I'm absolutely positive he would have violently opposed the inclusion of them to the Constitution.
Right but it doesn't mean that nobody can make products using your patent; it means you benefit from it when they do. Which is not so much a societal problem.
The self-centered egotistical notion that these ideas are something unique to one inventor as opposed to the reality where the vast majority (though certainly not all) of ideas are just obvious consequences of timing and everything that came before is really, really goofy and it is crazy that we award the first person who happens to legally file such ideas a nearly 2 decade monopoly on them.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Read the writings of Thomas Jefferson who very clearly had a much higher bar in mind for awards of patentability than the rubber-stamping we do today:
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-03...
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-00...
Just a couple of examples, but pretty much whenever Jefferson writes about patentable ideas he always stresses how high the bar must be on both real novelty of the invention and high social value of the invention.
If he had any notion of what patents would turn into today I'm absolutely positive he would have violently opposed the inclusion of them to the Constitution.